Former Sotheby's chief executive Diana "Dede" Brooks has been sentenced to six months home detention for her part in a price fixing scandal that shook the international art world.

You have allowed yourself to go from a successful respected executive to being ridiculed as a caricature for melodrama

Presiding judge George Daniels

Brooks, 51, formerly one of the most powerful figures in the art auctioning industry, was also ordered by the New York court to pay $350,000 in fines, serve three years of probation and work 1,000 hours of community service.

Her sentence comes a week after her former boss, ex-Sotheby's chairman Alfred Taubman was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for orchestrating a scam with his opposite number at Christie's auction house, Sir Anthony Tennant to artificially raise fees charged to clients.

The conspiracy is thought to have overcharged Sotheby's sellers more than $40m in the 1990s.

The two auction houses control about 90% of the world's live auction market in goods such as art and jewellery.